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The Talmud (Mishnah) in Translation

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The Talmud (Mishnah) in Translation chapter 21 Christian-Hebraists: The Talmud (Mishnah) in Translation The most unusual tractates in this work are translations were published with the explicit understanding that the of mishnayot for the benefit of non-Jews, in this case for university faculty members who prepared those works Christian-Hebraists.1 The Reformation and Counter- did so to “repudiate the fallacies of Jewish law.”4 Examples Reformation had a major impact on Christian attitudes of prominent professors of Hebrew unambiguously so toward Jewish literature. From the mid-sixteenth cen- informed by the theological faculties of their universi- tury, the Catholic Church reacted with incredible ties were Constantin L’Empereur (1591–1648) at Leiden harshness toward the Reformation and the liberalism of and Johannes Leusden (1624–99) at Utrecht.5 Aaron L. the Renaissance, burning the Talmud in Italy and banning Katchen expresses a somewhat more sanguine view and its possession. Subsequently, however, the Church allowed writes that the basic works of rabbinic Judaism, Mishnah the printing of the Talmud, but only in an expurgated and Talmud, received a new hearing. Despite still being edition and with an alteration to its name. The ban against the subject of abuse, new editions of the Mishnah, with the Talmud and related works, such as Ein Ya’akov, never extracts of the Talmud “often served to dispel illusions. included the Mishnah. Despite the close and integral Most often, to be sure, these works were produced for relationship between Mishnah and Talmud, the Church the greater glory of the Christian Republic of Letters…. distinguished between the two.2 However there was also a blunting of prejudice that some- In contrast, Protestants evinced considerable inter- times came to the fore in such studies. For these studies est in the study of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). As reflect a mixture of Christian Purposes and a new vision a result, grammar books, lexicographic works, as well of either rationalism or Enlightenment.”6 as translations of Hebrew texts, including translations of Elisheva Carlebach observes: “[s]ome of the Christian Talmudic (Mishnaic) tractates were printed with com- Talmudists were animated by polemical anti-Jewish mentaries. Hebrew was considered to be of significance motives.” She cites Johannes Leusden as an example to students of theology and related texts were therefore of for whom “Jewish adherence to the Talmud proved that importance.3 Fuks and Fuks-Mansfeld note Hebrew texts Jews were in a perpetual state of disobedience to God, having abandoned the Bible for the Talmud.” However, Carlebach also observes that Aramaic lexicons and gram- 1 Concerning translations of the Talmud for Jews, a somewhat later process, see Adam Mintz, “The Talmud in Translation,” Printing mars, particularly from the Buxtorfs, “provided welcome the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein, ed. Sharon Lieberman tools for serious students of Talmud.”7 Christian inter- Mintz and Gabriel M. Goldstein (New York, 2005), 121–41. ests in the Talmud varied. L’Empereur’s translation of 2 When the Council of Trent permitted the publication of an expur- Bava Kamma, which deals with civil law, exemplified the gated edition of the Talmud in 1564, it forbade the title Talmud; interest in the new and developing relationship of the in its place were substituted terms such as Gemara (actually only a portion of the whole); shas, for shishah sedarim [six orders] state and its legal system. Others, such as John Lightfoot, of Mishnah; and limud, for learning. Amnon Raz-Krakotzin searched the Talmud for insight into the Christian Bible, (“Persecution and the Art of Printing: Hebrew Books in Italy in the 1550s,” Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman, ed. Richard I. Cohen, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Hebrew studies, for example, the Reuchlin-Dominican controversy, Adam Shear, and Elchanan Reiner [Pittsburgh, 2014], 97) writes the Luther-Sabbatarian conflict, as well as the battles between the that he is unaware of any extant and explicit Catholic recognition Hebraists of Basel and those of Wittenberg as to the proper use of or tolerance of the Mishnah. Nevertheless, he finds it telling that at Jewish sources and the optimum approach to rabbinic material. a time the Talmud was burned, the Mishnah, when published inde- 4 Fuks and Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew Typography, vol. 1, 14. pendently rather than as part of a Talmud, was tolerated. 5 Ibid. 3 Christian-Hebraism was not only a seventeenth- and eighteenth- 6 Aaron L. Katchen, “Christian Hebraism from the Renaissance to the century phenomenon, but had considerable, earlier antecedents. Enlightenment,” in Christian Hebraism: The Study of Jewish Culture Those scholars who expressed an interest in rabbinic subjects, by Christian Scholars in Medieval and Modern Times, edited by Aaron for whatever reason, did not prepare translations of the Talmud. L. Katchen and Charles Berlin, 11. Proceedings of a colloquium and Concerning Christian-Hebraism in the sixteenth century, see catalogue of an exhibition arranged by the Judaica Department Jerome Friedman, The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth-Century of the Harvard College Library on the occasion of Harvard’s 350th Christian-Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgia (Athens, OH, anniversary celebration (Cambridge, MA, 1988). 1983); and Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (New York, 1959), 7 Elisheva Carlebach, “The Status of the Talmud in Early Modern 137–64. Friedman, on pages 1–2, notes the controversial nature of Europe,” Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein, 85–86. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004376731_023 316 chapter 21 and Hugo Grotius cited the Talmud as proof that God had bestowed laws applicable to mankind in addition to those specifically applicable to Jews. John Selden viewed the Talmud as a natural evolution of biblical law for contem- porary society.8 Johann Heinrich Hottinger, who translated Hagigah into Latin (Leiden, 1704), expressed his rationale for study- ing Hebrew in his Commentarius philologicus de decimus judaeorum, decem exercitationibus absolutus (Leiden, 1713). (More information and images appear later in this chapter.) He defends his interest in Hebraic studies, writ- ing that whoever can explain Mosaic law and the other books of the Bible, as well as many places in the Christian Bible without having looked into Jewish ritual will truly be for him “the Great Apollo.” Hottinger continues: Indeed, are not all the laws handed down about the worship of the Levites, or concerning sacred places, or the sacred persons, or sacred things, or sacred times, typical and peculiar to Christians, cherished even by the more ancient Jews, to whom the mystery of salvation was revealed, even though imperfectly?… Moreover, in what manner can the true relationship of antitype to type be shown unless the literal meaning of the type is first brought to light? And, in truth, how is that understood except from the rituals of the Jews?9 figure 21.1 From the examples above and from those that follow, it here mishnayot but certainly true of other works— is clear that these Christian students of Jewish texts— varied in their attitudes to those texts; some were hos- tile, others relatively positive. The following descriptions 8 John Selden, one of seventeenth-century England’s foremost of translations of the Mishnah by Christian-Hebraists jurists and legal scholars, was the author of several monographs provide examples of Talmudic works prepared by concerning the interrelationship between the Hebrew Bible and Christian-Hebraists; however, the intention is not to pro- contemporary Protestant Europe. In Of the Dominion or Ownership vide a comprehensive compilation.10 of the Sea (Mare Clausum) (1635), Abraham Berkowitz (“John Selden and the Biblical Origins of the Modern International Political I begin with a bilingual Hebrew-Latin translation of System,” Jewish Political Studies Review 6, no. 12 [1994]: 28–30) writes extracts of the mishnayot of Sanhedrin and Makkot by that Selden “attempted to isolate elements of biblical law explicated Johannes Cocceius. Duo Tituli Thalmvdici Sanhedrin et in the Talmud and expounded upon by the earliest post-Amoraic Maccoth is a quarto (40: [30], 436, [4]) in format, pub- scholars, in order to apply such Rabbinic jurisprudential concepts to the emerging international law of the high seas…. For this purpose, lished by Johannes Jansonius (Jan Jansz., Ioannem he invoked proof-texts from the Hebrew Bible, which he interpreted Ianssonium) and printed by Frederick Heynsius (Frederici according to the Talmudic and Rabbinic traditions. Similarly, in his Hensii, Heynsius) in Amsterdam in 1629. Despite the title monograph The Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce, Selden applied page listing the place of publication as Amsterdam and jurisprudential concepts derived from the Hebrew Bible to resolve the contractual nature of marriage and divorce as expounded in the Talmud.” Berkowitz concludes that “Selden’s exhaustive explora- 10 Certainly far afield, but I would be remiss in not noting an early, tion of the multifarious aspects of Talmudic jurisprudence in the perhaps the earliest, translation of mishnayot into Arabic by above work led him to the following conclusion: that the scope of R. Joseph ben Isaac ibn Abitur (10th–11th cent.). The translation Talmudic law was so inclusive as to extend to virtually every aspect was the request of Caliph al-Hakim II of Cordova. Ibn Abitur, of human activity on the individual and societal level, as well as the a student of R. Moses ben Hanokh (d. c. 965) in Cordova, was interaction between nations on the international level.” one of the foremost sages of the time (Harry Freedman, The 9 Quoted in Frank E. Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Talmud—A Biography: Banned, Censored and Burned: The Book Christian Eyes (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 228. They Couldn’t Suppress [London, 2014]), 91..
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